On board the schooner they could perceive no wreckage floating near. What sufferings, obscure and horrible, was that little wreck memorializing? The phantoms of the imagination peopled her. White-faced men, dying in squatting postures, were upon the sea-broken deck-load of timber. There was no captain, no command, the fingers of famine had effaced distinctions. Then one would die with a groan, falling sideways with his white eyes glazing to the sun; and another would mutter in delirium, and call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and motion with a ghastly smile to his mother to make haste with the drink of water she was bringing him. Phantoms or no phantoms, all were gone. The wreck lay apparently lifeless, absolutely abandoned, a yawning frame, sodden by weeks of washing to and fro. Thus it seemed to the eyes aboard the schooner as she drew closer and closer to the desolate, mournful, storm-broken fabric. 'There may be rats in that vessel,' said the mate, with a countenance made up of relief and extreme curiosity; 'but I don't see them, Captain Parry, neither do I see anything else that's living.' 'A ship has taken them off,' said Captain Parry, in a tone of hopeless misery; 'and it may be months and years before I find out what is the fate of Miss Vanderholt.' They were now within a musket-shot of the wreck. The yacht's way was arrested, and she seemed to stand at gaze, with her people staring. The long swell swung a dismal roll into the lifeless hull. A raffle of rigging lay over her sides, and whenever she rolled away she tore this gear up from the water as if it had been sea-plants whose roots were a thousand fathoms deep; it rose hissing to the drag, and sank, like baffled snakes, when she came wearily over again. It made the heart sick to watch her, to figure one's self as alone upon her; the loose timbers clattering through the long, black night, the dark water welling in sobs alongside, the awful and soul-subduing spirit of stillness that lies in the sea when its billows are silent, as though the hush in the central heart of the profound rose like an emanation of wind or vapour, taking the senses of the lonely one with the maddening undertones of spiritual utterance. Mr. Blundell continued to view the wreck through a glass. Captain Parry stood beside him with tightly-folded arms, death-white with grief and the sickness of disappointment, and silent. 'There is nobody aboard that vessel, sir.' 'I fear not,' the captain answered in a low voice. 'The only place where people could find shelter,' said the mate, 'is in that little green deck-house. If there were eight men sitting in the house, one would have seen us, and all have tumbled out long ago.' 'The long-boat has told us the story,' said the captain. 'They have been taken on board another vessel. Is Miss Vanderholt with them?' He started as to a sudden access of temper and determination, and said: